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Ground Zero Man
1st Corgi 1976 edition paperback vg condition In stock shipped from our UK warehouse
Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
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About the author
Bob Shaw
212 books103 followersBob Shaw was born in Northern Ireland. After working in structural engineering, industrial public relations, and journalism he became a full time science fiction writer in 1975.
Shaw was noted for his originality and wit. He was two-time recipient (in 1979 and 1980) of the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer. His short story Light of Other Days was a Hugo Award nominee in 1967, as was his novel The Ragged Astronauts in 1987.
Shaw was noted for his originality and wit. He was two-time recipient (in 1979 and 1980) of the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer. His short story Light of Other Days was a Hugo Award nominee in 1967, as was his novel The Ragged Astronauts in 1987.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
April 29, 2020
I should have finished this book a long time ago. (Oh my goodness it has been almost two years! 😱) I just couldn’t do it at the time because I had gotten too emotionally involved with the protagonist and knew he was going to end in self-destruction. I just couldn’t read it!
The ending, though, was something entirely different than what I had been expecting!
***SPOILERS***
It is so weird because I picked out this book hurriedly in a local used book store because the owner had told me that if I bought one science fiction book, I could get one for free! Wasn’t going to pass that opportunity, to say the least, but the book store was about to close and so I didn’t have the time to be choosy about it. I picked this book mainly because of the art work on the cover (not the one depicted on Goodreads here haha), and it sounded vaguely interesting. Once I started reading it, though, I was instantly drawn in and enamored by its psychological depth. This book is so different than what I have come to usually expect of a retro science fiction story! It felt much more mature and dealt with much darker ideas, as it is primarily a psychological thriller. The main character is a kind of psychopathic mathematician who ends up discovering a way to change the structure of neutrons, thus if a machine was built and then activated, it would immediately detonate all nuclear weapons throughout the world. He becomes “ground zero man”, holding the world in the palm of his hand. Yet the main conceit is not what this story is about, but it is really about a man and his wife, as he descends into existential madness. He, Lucas, is married to Vicky, and they have a kind of co-dependent toxic relationship, hurting one another, manipulating one another, and exacerbating one another’s deep set insecurities. In the end, this story becomes something much more akin to Gone Girl than anything science fiction related - which is what surprised me. Lucas is driven to extremes, mostly in part because of his relationship with his wife, as he is a reticent, awkward, “asexual” man obsessed with his work, understanding numbers much better than his understanding of people. Vicky is a needy, insecure, jealous, pragmatic woman, who strives for his love and attention, competing with his work. They love each other, they hate each other, they cannot stand one another, and yet they cannot leave each other. And Lucas’ downward spiral, as he becomes myopic and delusional, believing that he is the world’s “savior” with this “anti-war machine”, is all truly for the purpose of proving himself to his wife, of besting her, of wanting to overcome her once and for all.
The end, unfortunately, is very much in the style of Gone Girl - a despairing dread, nihilistic and gut-punchingly anticlimactic: in the end they have one another forever, and none of it even mattered.
It’s so depressing 😕, but it was definitely a fascinating read, a book I couldn’t put down (until I did for two years).
The ending, though, was something entirely different than what I had been expecting!
***SPOILERS***
It is so weird because I picked out this book hurriedly in a local used book store because the owner had told me that if I bought one science fiction book, I could get one for free! Wasn’t going to pass that opportunity, to say the least, but the book store was about to close and so I didn’t have the time to be choosy about it. I picked this book mainly because of the art work on the cover (not the one depicted on Goodreads here haha), and it sounded vaguely interesting. Once I started reading it, though, I was instantly drawn in and enamored by its psychological depth. This book is so different than what I have come to usually expect of a retro science fiction story! It felt much more mature and dealt with much darker ideas, as it is primarily a psychological thriller. The main character is a kind of psychopathic mathematician who ends up discovering a way to change the structure of neutrons, thus if a machine was built and then activated, it would immediately detonate all nuclear weapons throughout the world. He becomes “ground zero man”, holding the world in the palm of his hand. Yet the main conceit is not what this story is about, but it is really about a man and his wife, as he descends into existential madness. He, Lucas, is married to Vicky, and they have a kind of co-dependent toxic relationship, hurting one another, manipulating one another, and exacerbating one another’s deep set insecurities. In the end, this story becomes something much more akin to Gone Girl than anything science fiction related - which is what surprised me. Lucas is driven to extremes, mostly in part because of his relationship with his wife, as he is a reticent, awkward, “asexual” man obsessed with his work, understanding numbers much better than his understanding of people. Vicky is a needy, insecure, jealous, pragmatic woman, who strives for his love and attention, competing with his work. They love each other, they hate each other, they cannot stand one another, and yet they cannot leave each other. And Lucas’ downward spiral, as he becomes myopic and delusional, believing that he is the world’s “savior” with this “anti-war machine”, is all truly for the purpose of proving himself to his wife, of besting her, of wanting to overcome her once and for all.
The end, unfortunately, is very much in the style of Gone Girl - a despairing dread, nihilistic and gut-punchingly anticlimactic: in the end they have one another forever, and none of it even mattered.
It’s so depressing 😕, but it was definitely a fascinating read, a book I couldn’t put down (until I did for two years).
July 19, 2014
In ‘The Peace Machine’ (a revised version of ‘Ground Zero Man’ 1971) Lucas Hutchman is a theoretical scientist working on a guided missile contract who, in his spare time, plays with scientific problems in his head. One day he works out the math for a neutron resonator; a machine that, once switched on, would detonate all the nuclear warheads in the world.
Soon after it is announced on the news that Damascus has been destroyed by a nuclear bomb. Hutchman, who was not until now planning to anything with his discovery, decides to build the machine and issue an ultimatum to all world governments that they dismantle their nuclear arsenal before the date that he switches it on.
It’s a peculiarly British piece, and notable for the fact that it’s far more of a literary work than some other Shaw novels.
Shaw’s trademark, if one can call it that, was to take a simple idea and extrapolate it to places no one else would think of going, but always with the human element at the forefront.
The characters have a certain Dickian hue, and are nearly pushed to the point of grotesquery, from Hutchman’s insanely jealous wife to the landlord of the Bed and Breakfast in Bolton to where Hutchman flees when he becomes – for reasons we need not go into – a wanted man. The landlord is a hectoring bully who demands that his wife put twice as much food on Hutchman’s plate as he actually wants and then insists that Hutchman come with him to the local pub. Shaw includes odd little touches of character such as the fact that the landlord has bent the key to Hutchman’s room so that he is able to lock himself in, but not lock the room when he goes out.
Hutchman’s secretary is a paranoid woman who appears to be critical of all men, not only Hutchman but another employee, Don Spain. He has an eidetic memory for sightings of those he knows, and the peculiar talent of deducing a truth from it and trading on salacious gossip.
Indeed, apart from Hutchman himself there appear to be no nice rational people in this novel at all, which is an added irony given that Hutchman’s overall concern is to save the human race from itself.
Hutchman himself, once he has posted letters to the leading governments of the world, threatening to set off the device and detonate all the warheads of the planet, descends into a state of illness and near insanity as he is pursued by the police, the army and foreign agents.
It’s not Shaw’s best work by any measure, but it’s an interesting piece placed in historical context.
Soon after it is announced on the news that Damascus has been destroyed by a nuclear bomb. Hutchman, who was not until now planning to anything with his discovery, decides to build the machine and issue an ultimatum to all world governments that they dismantle their nuclear arsenal before the date that he switches it on.
It’s a peculiarly British piece, and notable for the fact that it’s far more of a literary work than some other Shaw novels.
Shaw’s trademark, if one can call it that, was to take a simple idea and extrapolate it to places no one else would think of going, but always with the human element at the forefront.
The characters have a certain Dickian hue, and are nearly pushed to the point of grotesquery, from Hutchman’s insanely jealous wife to the landlord of the Bed and Breakfast in Bolton to where Hutchman flees when he becomes – for reasons we need not go into – a wanted man. The landlord is a hectoring bully who demands that his wife put twice as much food on Hutchman’s plate as he actually wants and then insists that Hutchman come with him to the local pub. Shaw includes odd little touches of character such as the fact that the landlord has bent the key to Hutchman’s room so that he is able to lock himself in, but not lock the room when he goes out.
Hutchman’s secretary is a paranoid woman who appears to be critical of all men, not only Hutchman but another employee, Don Spain. He has an eidetic memory for sightings of those he knows, and the peculiar talent of deducing a truth from it and trading on salacious gossip.
Indeed, apart from Hutchman himself there appear to be no nice rational people in this novel at all, which is an added irony given that Hutchman’s overall concern is to save the human race from itself.
Hutchman himself, once he has posted letters to the leading governments of the world, threatening to set off the device and detonate all the warheads of the planet, descends into a state of illness and near insanity as he is pursued by the police, the army and foreign agents.
It’s not Shaw’s best work by any measure, but it’s an interesting piece placed in historical context.
January 15, 2018
Ein Buch aus den späten 70ern, als die Angst vor dem Atomkrieg wieder verstärkt umging.
Mir gefiel die Hauptperson, ein Mann, der in eine Position gedrängt wird, wo er glaubt, etwas tun zu müssen, unwillig aber unausweichlich. Eben ein richtiger Antiheld. Er stellt sich gegen alle Mächtigen. Er stellt sich teils sehr klug an, teils auch naiv. Das scheint mir recht realistisch. Auch seine toxische Beziehung zu seiner krankhaft eifersüchtigen Frau war glaubwürdig.
Nicht so gefallen hat mir die physikalische Grundidee der Antikriegs-Maschine. Sie wird aus gutem Grund nicht näher durchleuchtet, ist sie doch an den Haaren herbeigezogen und ziemlich unmöglich. Dem Autoren war das wohl egal, ihm ging es um das was-wäre-wenn. Mich hat es gestört.
Das Ende war seltsam. Nicht eindeutig. Was wollte der Autor dem Leser sagen? Alles umsonst? Keine Chance, was zu tun?
Mir gefiel die Hauptperson, ein Mann, der in eine Position gedrängt wird, wo er glaubt, etwas tun zu müssen, unwillig aber unausweichlich. Eben ein richtiger Antiheld. Er stellt sich gegen alle Mächtigen. Er stellt sich teils sehr klug an, teils auch naiv. Das scheint mir recht realistisch. Auch seine toxische Beziehung zu seiner krankhaft eifersüchtigen Frau war glaubwürdig.
Nicht so gefallen hat mir die physikalische Grundidee der Antikriegs-Maschine. Sie wird aus gutem Grund nicht näher durchleuchtet, ist sie doch an den Haaren herbeigezogen und ziemlich unmöglich. Dem Autoren war das wohl egal, ihm ging es um das was-wäre-wenn. Mich hat es gestört.
Das Ende war seltsam. Nicht eindeutig. Was wollte der Autor dem Leser sagen? Alles umsonst? Keine Chance, was zu tun?
May 13, 2020
Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...
3.5/5
"Bob Shaw’s Ground Zero Man (1971) is a well-told take on a common 50s/60s/70s sci-fi trope — the discovery of technology which could potentially end the omnipresent danger of all out nuclear war. Although the premise is straightforward and simplistic, the main character (Lucas Hutchman) and his motivations are drawn in a convincing manner, the ending is somewhat [...]"
3.5/5
"Bob Shaw’s Ground Zero Man (1971) is a well-told take on a common 50s/60s/70s sci-fi trope — the discovery of technology which could potentially end the omnipresent danger of all out nuclear war. Although the premise is straightforward and simplistic, the main character (Lucas Hutchman) and his motivations are drawn in a convincing manner, the ending is somewhat [...]"
April 19, 2014
This is a 1980s reprint of the 1976 book Ground Zero Man, once you realise this you can start to see some of the Cold War era fears and tensions start to come through. Yes there are other references which help to date the original story but its the political ideas that as much as anything place the story. It is quite a bleak story as much as mapping human frailties and fears as it is the horrors of atomic weapons and what really is the ultimate deterrent.
September 24, 2021
Due to a weird mixup I didn’t actually complete my reading goal until this book. This was my first experience with Bob Shaw and I definitely enjoyed it! I do think the ending was a bit rushed, I would have liked to seen Lucas struggle a bit more in some areas, but the concept and end message were really good!
August 21, 2022
Pope believed that a little learning is a dangerous thing. Shaw (that’s B, not GB) proposes that a lot of learning is even more dangerous as his obsessive mathematician protagonist tries his upmost to prevent a global disaster while living a matrimonial disaster. Things don’t quite work out as planned in this entertaining, workmanlike short novel, published in 1971 and reflecting the concerns of the time. Hold on. The concerns are still there!
October 24, 2020
Ancora oggi molto ben leggibile e avvincente. Non sono sicuro di aver capito bene il finale!
December 10, 2025
Pretty dull
December 23, 2025
Our protagonist is a mathematician in an unexciting job with a batshite crazy wife who makes him deeply unhappy. One day he works out the math for a neutron resonator; a machine that, once switched on, would detonate all the nuclear warheads in the world which, even in the 70's when this was written would have been unequivocally enough to send the whole world straight into nuclear winter, this is not mentioned in the text. I know this because I looked it up.
Soon after this discovery a news article tells how Damascus has been destroyed by a nuclear bomb, and following another fight with his wife, Hutchman decides to build the machine. Having built it he carefully maps out plans to send the information to all governments on Earth for reasons that are never clearly outlined. He carefully calculates how long it will take each letter to reach each country by the post, so they all arrive at the same time for some obscure reason... (to give them time to check the maths? To build their own device?) BUT he also tells them all that he has already built the device and plans to detonate it on a given time and date. Now this may, MAY be an attempt to cause them all to disarm, but it makes no sense and I don't remember that ever even being the claim. Possibly it was so idiotic a notion that my brain just skipped past the fact that an adult actually thought the result would be nuclear disarmament rather than a simple assassination of Hutchman.
Having built the machine, he gets mixed up in a murder purely due to his own idiocy (though I have to admit the escape from gaol was kind of cool) and flees, ineptly, around England until the date for him to detonate his device comes and he goes to do that.
It reads as a very British novel, characters, settings ect. The literary style was great but the plot was all over the place and it mostly read like a thriller written by someone who does not know how to write a thriller and who rarely reads them. I just don't understand why he didn't just write a thriller novel set in England. The insertion of the neutrino device made no sense; I have seen so many reviews claiming that it was there to make the governments of the world dismantle their weapons, but I really don't remember that being given as the reason. If it was, the level of stupidity involved in thinking this would work was acute. Though probably no stupider than Hutchman roving the countryside on 'the run' totally mucking that up as well.
I really did not like this one, and I completely acknowledge this as a 'me problem' because Shaw writes brilliantly and most readers loved it. Maybe I was reading it too fast but it seemed to me that Hutchman decided to build it because of (another) fight with his wife. His life with her is so terrible that it defies the modern imagination why he would stay with her and the author seems far FAR more fascinated by their mucky marital relationship than he is with the science elements of this plot.
Hutchman's continuously illogical behaviours are a big part of why I did not enjoy reading this. I don't like wilful stupidity and Hutchman's relationship with his wife are that. He keeps calling her crazy, for example, but how about taking her to a doctor and getting her some meds? She clearly needs them, but noooo....
So then he decides to get an old flame to deliver an envelope to Russia instead of mailing it. Because the government might open it and read it? Really? Isn't that the whole AIM of sending it to Russia?
Well, old flame is a communist... *ehm* so Australia in the 60-70's inherited their phobia and hysteria about communism from the UK, which was so bad that some people got arrested purely based on this ideology. Also, Australia inherited the complete inability to discriminate between communism and socialism but that is a rant for another day. So Hutchman's old flame ends up being evil/communist and as a result someone dies. After that the novel loses any semblance of science fiction and while Shaw can describe characters like no one's business his ability to write a thriller is non existent.
So the already downhill slope becomes a cliff. A horrible cringe worthy cliff which I was relieved to be done with.
The ending also made no sense, but I did not care about that so much because I was so grateful to be done.
Soon after this discovery a news article tells how Damascus has been destroyed by a nuclear bomb, and following another fight with his wife, Hutchman decides to build the machine. Having built it he carefully maps out plans to send the information to all governments on Earth for reasons that are never clearly outlined. He carefully calculates how long it will take each letter to reach each country by the post, so they all arrive at the same time for some obscure reason... (to give them time to check the maths? To build their own device?) BUT he also tells them all that he has already built the device and plans to detonate it on a given time and date. Now this may, MAY be an attempt to cause them all to disarm, but it makes no sense and I don't remember that ever even being the claim. Possibly it was so idiotic a notion that my brain just skipped past the fact that an adult actually thought the result would be nuclear disarmament rather than a simple assassination of Hutchman.
Having built the machine, he gets mixed up in a murder purely due to his own idiocy (though I have to admit the escape from gaol was kind of cool) and flees, ineptly, around England until the date for him to detonate his device comes and he goes to do that.
It reads as a very British novel, characters, settings ect. The literary style was great but the plot was all over the place and it mostly read like a thriller written by someone who does not know how to write a thriller and who rarely reads them. I just don't understand why he didn't just write a thriller novel set in England. The insertion of the neutrino device made no sense; I have seen so many reviews claiming that it was there to make the governments of the world dismantle their weapons, but I really don't remember that being given as the reason. If it was, the level of stupidity involved in thinking this would work was acute. Though probably no stupider than Hutchman roving the countryside on 'the run' totally mucking that up as well.
I really did not like this one, and I completely acknowledge this as a 'me problem' because Shaw writes brilliantly and most readers loved it. Maybe I was reading it too fast but it seemed to me that Hutchman decided to build it because of (another) fight with his wife. His life with her is so terrible that it defies the modern imagination why he would stay with her and the author seems far FAR more fascinated by their mucky marital relationship than he is with the science elements of this plot.
Hutchman's continuously illogical behaviours are a big part of why I did not enjoy reading this. I don't like wilful stupidity and Hutchman's relationship with his wife are that. He keeps calling her crazy, for example, but how about taking her to a doctor and getting her some meds? She clearly needs them, but noooo....
So then he decides to get an old flame to deliver an envelope to Russia instead of mailing it. Because the government might open it and read it? Really? Isn't that the whole AIM of sending it to Russia?
Well, old flame is a communist... *ehm* so Australia in the 60-70's inherited their phobia and hysteria about communism from the UK, which was so bad that some people got arrested purely based on this ideology. Also, Australia inherited the complete inability to discriminate between communism and socialism but that is a rant for another day. So Hutchman's old flame ends up being evil/communist and as a result someone dies. After that the novel loses any semblance of science fiction and while Shaw can describe characters like no one's business his ability to write a thriller is non existent.
So the already downhill slope becomes a cliff. A horrible cringe worthy cliff which I was relieved to be done with.
The ending also made no sense, but I did not care about that so much because I was so grateful to be done.
August 3, 2025
More of a mimetic psychological thriller than sci-fi, it likely felt this way because on mention of hard-SF science caused my eyes to glaze over. As a thriller it works well however. I enjoy when bad (insane) decisions are made, or dire (disturbing) consequences come about which, in the moment, seem less insane and disturbing than they may be otherwise.
Shaw explores how these moments of alienation from normality arise from an inconsolable conflict between individual and collective or, perhaps more accurately, the conflict that arises when boundaries of empathy are stretched.
Shaw explores how these moments of alienation from normality arise from an inconsolable conflict between individual and collective or, perhaps more accurately, the conflict that arises when boundaries of empathy are stretched.
June 21, 2016
This was the second book by Bob Shaw I read (after "Dagger of the Mind") and I hope to read more of him in the near future. Author definitely has a style of his own reminding me sometimes of Charles Eric Maine (being Shaw perhaps more daring). Characters are well crafted and plot balances very smoothly between action and description.
Read
August 25, 2010FIRST PUBLISHED AS 'GROUND ZERO MAN'
May 27, 2014
Well-written and plenty suspenseful once the main character goes on the run. A good mix of drama and action.
April 29, 2015
1982 grade D
2009 grace F+
2009 grace F+
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews